A San Antonio nurse is traveling halfway around the world to volunteer in a rural hospital in India. It’s an experience she says makes her a better health care worker here.
As a critical care nurse, Suzanne Ohlmann helps comfort and heal patients in the intensive care unit of Methodist Specialty & Transplant Hospital. But helping sick patients hasn’t always been her passion.
In 2004, she took her first trip to a rural hospital in Juanga, India, in the heart of a third world country in need. What she experienced changed her life.
“The initial Western perspective that was in me that I thought was pretty flexible was completely beaten out of me after spending that time there,” Ohlmann remembered, “because it didn’t matter.”
Ohlmann switched professions, from musician to registered nurse. She has spent a total of a year in Juanga, helping people who have never had access to regular medical care before.
She says helping people on the other side of the globe gives her a more grounded perspective when she’s back home. “I think that I don’t get as upset as easily when things aren’t going the way that I want them to,” she said. “Right now is relative. And I didn’t know that before.”
“My hope is that whatever I learn there will continue to inform whatever I do here because poverty is poverty,” she commented. “It doesn’t matter the geographical location. The needs of people are the same.”
Ohlmann heads back to India next month. For more information on the non-profit hospital in Juanga, click on the link above.
